Prologue

As far as the eye could see, the world was white—pure white.

It settled over the area, more pristine than morning mist, more tranquil than the sea of clouds fanned around the highest mountain peak.

Fog.

Amid its soft whiteness, which seemed impossible to touch, stood one little girl.

As the fog spread out with her at the center, covering everything with its haze, she slowly stretched her hand out.

Vapor coiled around it, clinging to her, heavier than lead and hindering her movements.

It was an unnatural amount of mass for fog. Even the tiny movement of raising her arm was enough to cause the condensation to mold itself to her body. When she tried to move anyway, it pressed down even harder until the small girl’s fragile arm broke with a snap.

“Mm…”

Though her arm had been twisted out of shape, she gave a little sigh of disappointment, evidently unbothered by the pain. She lifted her chin, looking toward the noises from her surroundings.

In the fog, she could barely make out the fingertips at the end of her broken arm. While she couldn’t depend on her eyes to guide her, she could listen to the unpleasant sounds that reached her ears.

At any moment, there was the eerie chattering of teeth, shrieks sounding like the mangled cries of birds and wild animals, flesh crashing into flesh, and dying screams. The inability to see anything but white fog made the sounds all the more unsettling.

And it wasn’t just her ears, either. Her body itself was exposed to a disquieting sensation. Drops of liquid poured down on her, soaking her skin.

It felt like rain, but it wasn’t.

Showering her was fresh blood.

Invisible in the fog, a battle was unfolding: combatants devouring, killing, crushing one another, rending flesh, tearing at one another’s spirits, swallowing their very souls.

This rain of blood striving to stain the white space would not last long. Chunks of flesh fell with a splat, and they would quickly be slurped up and swallowed by something unseen.

“Mm, mm, mmm…”

She used her ears, skin, nose, tongue, and everything but her obscured vision to sense her surroundings as she began to hum.

“Mm, mm-mm-mm, mm, mm…”

The little girl—so out of place in this bizarre location—was humming a tune. She sang the melody with nothing but wordless notes, no lyrics to match the song.

As she dangled her legs in the air, the surface below her seemed to shift in response to the song. It moved forward, backward, left, right, and even up and down. The very ground was altering.

“Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm.”

Something landed with a wet splat right next to the girl.

An entire armful’s worth of meat. Ah, she thought, realizing that something above her must have gotten torn apart by something else. Lumps of bloody flesh, noticeably larger than usual, began to fall around her.

Within moments, small monsters scuttled closer to devour the meat. In the constant eat-or-be-eaten battle, dead monster meat was the perfect fodder. One of the creatures that had come to scavenge for meat set its sights on the little girl, who was innocently humming her tune.

A bird-shaped monster, bigger than a human being. It assumed the smaller figure was defenseless prey and thrust its long beak down to impale her.

The little girl paid it no mind. There was no need for her to do anything.

“Mm, mm-mm, mm, mm, mm…”

The surface below her feet lurched upward.

What the girl was actually standing on was a gigantic beast. It would be difficult to measure even its width, let alone its full length. The monster, as big as a living island, opened its maw.

Its mouth was bristling with spikelike teeth. Even the smallest tooth was larger than an adult human being. The bird monster that had swooped down to attack was swallowed like a tiny fish into the mouth of a whale. It crashed onto one of the teeth, skewered to death.

When the large monster moved, the surrounding battle sped up. Blood gushed like fountains. Broken teeth and pieces of flesh piled high. Soon, there was so much mashed-up sinew that it spread before her like the ocean.

But none of it mattered to the little girl.

“Mm, mm-mm-mm-mm.”

Bloody rain. Clots of flesh. Dispersing spirits. Scattered souls. Even the primary color of red that tried to dye the world in chaos and despair was painted over by the white fog. And through it all, the girl paid no attention to any of it as she hummed a tune.

It was an ordinary day for her, until the next moment.

“……Mm?” She suddenly stopped her song and blinked rapidly.

CREAK went a loud noise.

Of course, the sounds of things breaking were perfectly usual. After all, this was a battlefield of cannibalism and bloodshed.

But this sound was different.

It wasn’t living flesh being torn, or bones breaking, or souls snapping. It was a strange sound, as if the world itself had bent.

What was it? She tilted her head and strained her ears, but nothing else was out of the ordinary. All she could hear was the usual sounds of living things being crushed and dying. Nothing but the typical fights and gruesome battles to devour one another.

She was about to dismiss it as her imagination when it happened again.

There was another CREAK, as if from the fog itself. And if it happened twice, surely it would happen a third time. As the girl waited warily, the grating sound repeated, albeit in long intervals.

This haze was made as a nearly impenetrable barrier, as far as things trying to escape from inside. It, however, was weak to pressure from the outside.

Though this white fog that imprisoned the little girl was incredibly close to perfect in accomplishing its goal, it wasn’t completely prepared for every situation imaginable.

The fog creaked again. Something was happening in the outside world. The structure of the mist was beginning to bend under external pressure.

For the first time in a millennium, it had begun to change.

“Mm…mm, mm!” She tried to say something, but what escaped her mouth failed to form words.

That was to be expected.

She, too, had been here for the last millennium. A thousand years with no one to talk to was more than enough to deprive her of speech. The voice—faintly familiar—stirred the vocabulary that lay somewhere deep in her memories, but all she could produce was an incomprehensible cry.

“Mmm…”

She had been here for so long. Long enough that she had lost all sense of time entirely.

The girl had been bored to death. Even after she’d ruined lands, devoured islands, drank up the ocean, and fought to the death. Even after she’d used up all her memories, and nothing was left in the fog. All there was to do was eat or be eaten.

That was about to change.

“Mm! Mm!”

The fog creaked once again. Finally, the bend was breaking past its limits. A small hole opened in the haze. It was only big enough for her little finger, but it was still a hole that led outside.

A way out.

She could leave this place. Escape from the fog.

But… What kind of place was outside, exactly?

She felt like there was something out there…something that she, personally, was supposed to do.

Wasn’t there?

“Mm…”

She couldn’t remember. How could she, after all this time?

Instead, the instincts that guided the girl were unconnected to her memories. There were two unwritten rules that motivated her now.

Bring chaos to this world.

Bring carnage to this planet.

“Mm!” The girl reached out her little finger. “Mmm, mm-mm-mm, mm-mm-mm, mm-mm-mm.”

Unable to remember anything, she kept on singing a song that she somehow still knew.

A pinky promise. Even if there were few in this world who knew of it, any Japanese child would recognize this vow.

At the same time, her eyes glowed red with Guiding Light.

Guiding Force: Sacrifice—

This was a place once known as the Alliance of Southern Islands. Their ancient civilization was at the height of prosperity when it was destroyed by the Four Major Human Errors; as a result, the entire area had been covered in fog for more than a thousand years.

Chaos Collusion, Pure Concept [Evil]—

The Pure Concept that existed alongside countless monsters. The Otherworlder who had recklessly wielded the title of Devourer of Worlds. The Human Error brought about by the Pure Concept of Evil was deemed unfit to exist and sealed away in the fog.

The site of the Human Error, invisible in the fog, was known and feared as Pandemonium. A territory of Evil, full of monsters and forbidden to humans.

Invoke [Pinky Promise, Little Miss Liar]

It was there that this single conjuring was invoked.